While the partnership between TCL and BlackBerry is officially over, the PKB smartphone maker had teamed up with another security company called OnwardMobility to manufacture new BlackBerry smartphones. OnwardMobility has announced that they are preparing to launch a new Blackberry flagship smartphone with 5G connectivity in 2021.
OnwardMobility is said to be working with Foxconn to develop the initial models and is stated to be released in North America, Europe, and Asia. Peter Franklin, the CEO, and Founder of Texas-based OnwardMobility consider Asia to be one of the most important markets. He also stated that “We are in the process of speaking to customers and mobile carriers on a global scale to develop our distribution plan.”
While the company did say it’s a “flagship” product, there is still no indication if the new BlackBerry will feature the 800-series Snapdragon processors or a Qualcomm chip for that matter. When Blackberry teamed up with TCL, the smartphones such as KEYone and the KEY2 did not exactly have a flagship SoC, and yet, it was still considered as a flagship product in their portfolio. The main idea of using 600-series Snapdragon processors on the KEYone and KEY2 was to deliver consumers a product that has sufficient performance and also good battery life.
However, we aren’t sure if OnwardMobility will follow the same path. All we know for now is that OnwardMobility in collaboration with FIH Mobile (the Android smartphone making firm of Foxconn) plans to release a Blackberry 5G smartphone and that it has a physical keyboard.
While there are surely loyal BlackBerry customers around the globe, OnwardMobility will have to do more than just deliver an Android PKG smartphone, if they want to challenge the likes of today’s biggest brands such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Honor, Apple, and more. Franklin also mentions that further details of the new flagship device will be announced in the coming months. Perhaps we will know more about the new BlackBerry smartphone during MWC 2021.
